Why?!
Why would you stop the dream job?!
You get to go around and take people to restaurants, eat tasty food, drink tons of beer and other liquor, and at the end, you make a couple hundred bucks!!!
Sounds like the dream, right?
Well… to tell the truth, I’m just goddamn tired.
There’s been countless groups, bachelor parties, brewery heavy tours, a few all-nighters, crazy fucking stories with people from all over the world, copious amounts of delicious food and late night street tacos, appeared in a couple of TV shows, and other broadcasts (and a disastrous one), and a lot of other crazy things happened in my tours.
The stories I tell.
The crazy South Africans.
How incredibly cheap Tijuana can be for some people.
Vegas on steroids.
And a tour guide in Vegas is going to get tired… in Tijuana… I’m surprised I lasted this long.
Other tour guides hire other people to handle some tours… but without me… Tijuana Adventure wouldn’t be the same. Or so it feels like that.
My friend Haydee helped for a while and I am forever grateful. She did a couple of art tours and a wine valley tour.
My friend Bryan wants to be the new tour guide, and for people asking for a tour, besides recommending all the other tour guides, I’ll mention my friend Bryan.
He is a good kid. But he is a kid.
Another reason for quitting.
I got somewhat of a real job. It still not completely real, but good enough to not seek out the extra cash on tours.
Well… when I think about it… yeah… that extra cash is super nice still.
I’m just a bit tired man.
I said I was quitting on my last few tours and still kept going.
Give me a year or so. Perhaps less. Who knows. But give me some time and I’ll be back with something better. More exclusive.
AND MORE EXPENSIVE!
Sorry.
It’s just… trust me. It will be awesome.
No more strip clubs.
Can’t do those anymore.
Instead of tours, the website will be dedicated for me to write stupid shit about food and beer!
You see… I used to write my opinions a lot but suddenly stopped because of creative differences with the editor. That editor is now gone. But I still don’t want to jump through hoops of an editor to say whatever the fuck I want.
YAY!
I get to say the word fuck.
How edgy and cool of me.
So what can you expect?
Quality pictures and my stupid opinions!
Here’s an example of the latest.
Haven’t been to the enchilado gods in a while, I forgot what I was missing…
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My friend Danger Dave took me to Los Compadres for the first time a few years ago. He guaranteed that they had the best camarón enchilado taco (spicy shrimp), better than Tijuana favorite El Mazateño.
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I have since gone to Los Compadres almost every week for the past couple of years for that very same taco. If I upload a picture to social media, I get flooded with questions as to where to find this taco (and many jealous comments). Here’s the answer:
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You find Los Compadres next to Parque Teniente Guerrero at the corner of 4th street and Cinco de Mayo. Open 7 a.m. and 3 p.m. daily, except Sundays. They start running out of shrimp around 1 p.m., so you need to get there early. They also serve fish and shrimp tacos (with or without batter), caldo de cahuamanta (stingray broth), marlin tacos, and more.
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All of their tacos are big. The battered fish and shrimp tacos are nothing to rave about and sell for around $1 each. They deep fry longer than usual, making the batter dark and crunchy. I prefer that type of taco light and crisp, so for battered fish and shrimp tacos I go to a nearby food truck.
Their caldo de cahuamanta they recommend for hangovers, especially if you add a spoonful of their very spicy salsa. It will sweat your hangover away, and Los Compadres will turn a blind eye if want to drink a Tecate at their taco stand. Their marlin taco is decent and similar to what you would find at any other taco stand that sells marlin.
Definitely the MVP and the main reason to go is the camarón enchilado. I could write a love song about this taco. It’s gigantic, greasy, has lots of melted cheese that gets burnt around the crust of the tortilla, and is loaded with a lot of flash-fried shrimp that was dunked in buttery chili sauce. It is topped (all optional) with cream, cabbage, tomato, cilantro, and chipotle sauce. It’s a complex and messy item to pick up and eat.
It’s not just me that has been addicted to these shrimp tacos. My friend Erik Trejo, who worked at Blind Lady Ale House, would regularly cross the border early morning just to eat the taco and head back north to work. The painful wait of crossing the border wasn’t enough to dissuade him.
Another friend who teaches English in Saudi Arabia stayed in my apartment for a month last summer. He ate two tacos de camarón enchilado every morning for his entire stay. He still randomly messages me that he misses the taco.
And it’s not just my friends. I have also bumped into owner of Baja-Med restaurant La Justina, Javier Cair, at Los Compadres. A former neighbor of mine, a white guy that partied too much, would take hordes of Americans and Europeans for that taco and kept the party going while drinking Tecate on the street.
None of the ingredients are gourmet or fancy. It’s a dirty fish taco truck just like the Tijuana Gods intended, and they happen to serve the best camarón enchilado taco I have ever tasted. They have a tip jar in form of a Tecate bottle. Drop some coins in when you are done with your meal and shout “por la causa!” Which means “for the cause,” the cause being to buy more Tecate.
That was actually an old article I wrote here. But they will follow a similar pattern and around that many words.
Just a bit more word vomity.
Most pictures will be taken with the iPhone X which is superb and posts will be posted in the Tijuana Adventure Instagram and Facebook pages. Pick whatever social media poison suits you best.
Then the posts will be later posted here. If there was a way for WordPress to simply post directly, that would be great. Alas, there is not.
Other pictures will be taken with my actual camera (Canon 7D for now). That’s the other job I’ve been also doing a lot.
I never really wanted to be a tour guide. This city needed one. I fulfilled my duty.
I can go back to photography work. Writing work. And now more work.
Tijuana Adventure will remain a hobby of food and beer reviewing.
I’ll try to be as honest as one can be without much hyperbole. Re-reading what I wrote about the sushi place sounds a tad exaggerated, but I meant every word. That place is fantastic and can’t wait till I’ll be back.
Both, Instagram and Facebook, pages grow by themselves without my need to sponsor them. And it’s stupid, now that I don’t do tours, I feel like throwing a couple dollars over to Zuckerberg and the social media void. At the same time, the real challenge is to grow those fuckers organically.
Oh.
And Reddit karma.
I basically promote and defend the fuck out of this city for free. They should pay me for it.
And somehow they do. Tijuana rewards me.
Tijuana has been good to me.
I might also get back into booking math rock shows. Hopefully, playing music again.
You see, it’s always been in this order:
I am a musician, writer, photographer, videogamer, and tour guide.
That last one was an additional one. It’s fun to be one and I’m very good at it. But it’s not my passion. It was paying me.
Video games I fucking adore and they had paid me for it in a few occasions (game tester for a couple of Guitar Heroes as well as the Transformers game and other little shitty things here and there). That doesn’t pay me now, but I still love it more than being a tour guide.
Writer and photographer right now are competing for which one makes more money.
They are sort of equal.
Some weeks I make more money writing. Some weeks I make more money doing photography.
Music is what I’ve always loved but has been a forgotten lover lately. I’ve been playing more guitar and a bit more inspired. So I need more time for this.
It’s the end of an era!
Thanks to everyone that came on an adventure with me. It’s been real. I seriously loved every single one of them except two.
And you all know this…
If you ever back in Tijuana, and I’m available. Just buy me a beer and let’s hang out. I like talking about all the new shit that the city has been going through and new places where to eat and drink!
I made friends with most of you. And I’m sorry if I don’t remember all of you clearly… it’s been a lot of tours. And they all blur into one crazy huge mega tour.
Oh. And one more reason to do this silliness. Last year I wrote more than 1,000 words a day but it was all about my personal life. Well, now it will be just about this. Keep my personal life out of this for a while (though I give 0 fucks).
And also. Because there are a lot of shitty people that do this and are no good. I feel like I’m better. So what?
I’m doing it for fun. Not for you. More for like myself and Tijuana. If you don’t agree with me, that’s okay. I probably don’t agree with you!
Thanks for reading and hope y’all enjoy a silly blog of food and drinks in this marvelous city. Let’s see how long this project will last…
